National grasscourt tennis: Ashwin scalps top seed Prashanth

Kolkata, Jan 16: Wild card Ashwin Vijayaraghavan from Andhra Pradesh continued his great run to shock top seed Tamil Nadu’s Vijay Sundar Prashanth and storm into the semi-final of the national grasscourt tennis championship here Thursday.

Prashanth took the first set of the men’s quarter-final outing 6-4 with a break of serve in the fourth game at the Calcutta South Club.

In the second, Prashanth was up 2-0 with an early break but Vijayaraghavan rallied back and stretched it to a tie-break, winning 7-4 to level the match.

The decider saw Vijayaraghavan break Prashanth in the fourth game and then hold serve to establish a 4-1 lead.

The two players held serve thereafter and Vijayaraghavan eventually won the set and match to set up a last four clash with Tamil Nadu boy and tournament’s third seed Vishnu Vardhan who defeated Suraj Prabodh of Karnataka 6-3, 6-4.

Second seed Tamil Nadu’s Jayaprakash Mohit Mayur will cross swords with fourth seed Chandril Sood of Uttar Pradesh in the other pre-summit clash.